Category: Contracts

MD: Reply to Hadrien Croubois article “About Trust and Agents Incentives”
HC: Hadrien Croubois
https://hadriencroubois.com
Oct 11, 2017PoCo Series #1 — About Trust and Agents Incentives
Who am I?
My name is Hadrien Croubois and I am a Ph.D. student at ENS de Lyon. My research as a Ph.D. student focuses on middleware design for the management of shared Cloud-based scientific-computing platforms; and more particularly how to optimise them for workflow execution.

MD: Why in the world should “cloud-based” systems even exist?

HC: However, my interests are much broader and include HPC, physics, and biology large-scale simulations, image rendering, machine learning and of course cryptography and blockchain technologies.

Since September 2017 I am also a scientific consultant for iExec. I met Gilles at ENS de Lyon and it was the perfect opportunity for me to experience working in a team designing innovative solutions.

My role as a member of this team is to study existing work from the research community and provide insight into the design of a proof-of-contribution protocol for iExec. This article is by no means a solution to this complex issue. It is rather an overview of our understanding and ideas regarding this issue.
Why iExec needs Proof-of-Contribution?

The iExec platform provides a network where application provider, workers, and users can gather and work together. Trust between these agents is to be achieved through the use of blockchain technology (Nakamoto consensus) and cryptography.

MD: COIK (Clear Only If Known). The key here is how Nakamoto establishes consensus. You really can’t know from reading the white paper that got all this started. In short, it comes down to “democracy” … i.e majority rules. In this case, over 1/2 the population. Anyone who has looked into democracy knows it cannot work with more than 50 parties involved.

HC: Our infrastructure is divided into 3 agents:

Application providers: They provide applications, which are seen as services.

MD: How do “application providers” originate?

HC: These applications can be called by the users with specific parameters. Application providers are paid for each execution of their application.

MD: Who pays the application providers. Almost the entire Android community of applications are provided at no cost whatever.

HC: The applications rely on the iExec smart contract to manage communications between the ethereum blockchain and the off-chain computing platform.

MD: COIK … what is a “smart” contract? Is it transparent? Who can see it? Who cannot?

HC: Users: They are the clients of the infrastructure. They pay to obtains results computed by the application.

MD: Seems like a non-competitive model. Take the internet itself. It is an infrastructure with no clients and no providers … or better yet, where everyone is both a client and provider. What problem is being solved here?

HC: Workers: They are computing entities that provide computing resources. These resources are used for the off-chain execution of the applications. Workers are paid based on their contribution to the computation of the applications.

MD: Again COIK. Why would workers be just “computing resources?” Seems like (reading way between the lines here) anyone being a source, or an opposition to a source, of information is a worker.

HC: The goal of the Proof-of-Contribution protocol is to achieve trust between the different agents, and more particularly between users and workers, in order for the users to be able to rely on the results computed by an external actor whose incentive is, at best, based on income.

MD: I once sat in a meeting where they made the rule that you had to say 5 nice things before you could say 1 thing critical. Want to guess how that meeting went?

HC: In particular, we want to achieve protection against Byzantine workers (who could provide bad results to penalize users) and users (who could argue against legitimate work performed by legitimate workers).

MD: Right. In sports we call those referees. But in real sports, the contestants referee themselves. We lose it when we establish rules and laws. What we really have is principles … and very few of them, the “golden principle” being paramount. Rules and laws just dilute principles. They essentially say, by defining this particular instance of the application of the principle, we declare all other applications unlawful … and thus have to define all particular instances in law after that … and thus totally lose sight of the principle. It’s called “gaming the system”.

HC: First approach: the result contribution validation scheme

Validation of the work performed by the worker can be achieved in two different ways:

Majority voting on the (hash of the) result.

MD: Like the long list of scientists who “vote” that global warming is real … when almost none of them are meteorologists or have the slightest clue of things physical?

HC: This helps mitigate against Byzantine workers but at the price of computing power overhead. Validating the result for a specific execution requires multiple workers to compute it, thus multiplying the execution cost by a factor m. In desktop grid or volunteer computing platforms (BOINC), this factor m can range from 3 all the way to 20~50. With more replication come more confidence in the result, but that also means that the reward is shared among more worker, reducing the incentive to the workers to contribute.

MD: Have you thought of a hierarchical structure to get around the fact that democracy doesn’t work with more than 50 people involved? The solution is to have each group of 50 solving the problems they can solve. They select a representative for the next lower group of 50 … and so on until you get to the final group of 50. Nothing should make it down to the bottom group of 50 and if it does, that group should come to a unanimous conclusion (establishing the principle) … not a majority conclusion. With this structure you can “democratically” represent the entire population on earth in just 6 layers of 50 person groups.

HC: Relying on a court system to solve conflicts between users and workers (TrueBit). This solution is however complicated both in terms of efforts from the users, who have to check every single result and from the platform which has to implement complex arbitration mechanisms. While this method does not require the work to be executed many times, the arbitration mechanism might call for heavy instrumentation of the execution in order for the worker to provide elements of proof if their execution is challenged.

MD: Better to make users and workers show where what they are doing “is” principled when challenged. Then let a small democratic group judge their “principled” defense … i.e. would they really want to be treated the way they are treating?

HC: A significant contribution was published by Luis Sarmenta (2002. Sabotage-tolerance mechanisms for volunteer computing systems. Future Generation Computer Systems, 18(4), 561–572). The proposed approach is based on majority voting but rather than relying on a fixed m factor, it dynamically “decides” how many contributions are necessary to achieve consensus (within a specific confidence level). The replication level is therefore dynamic and automatically adapted, during execution, by the scheduler. This helps to achieve fast consensus when possible and to solve any conflicts.

MD: Did it ever occur to you that if we had computers before we had internal combustion engines and the subsequent invention of governors that we couldn’t even mow our lawns today? The mower would become too complicated to use … and enormously unreliable … in spite of the enormous computing power that is thrown at the problem.

HC: Fig 3 from Sarmenta’s paper, describing how workers contribute to different jobs by voting on the result.

This approach relies on worker reputation to limit the potential impact of Byzantine agents and to achieve consensus.

MD: Did you read the global warming emails. You see how workers reputations are easily co-opted … how the best of systems are easily gamed by gangsters.

HC: Yet this approach is designed for desktop grid infrastructures, where money is out of the equation. Using the financial incentive of the different actors, we can modify and improve their approach to better fit our context:

Each worker retribution for computing a task can be indexed on their impact on the consensus for this task. In addition, having a good reputation helps to achieve fast consensus with fewer agents (meaning a bigger share for each agent). This gives the workers a financial incentive to act well and have their reputation go up.

MD: Do you think Digital Research would have won out over the deficient Microsoft if your rules were in place? Do you think Borland would still exist?

HC: Workers are required to commit a security deposit (stake) which is seized in case of bad behavior. This gives the worker an additional financial incentive to behave correctly.

MD: And the process for “seizure” is???

HC: The main drawback of Sarmenta’s article is the assumption that Byzantine workers are not working together and do not coordinate their attacks. While this assumption does not hold in our context, we believe we can still achieve it by selecting workers randomly among the worker pool. Therefore Byzantine workers controlled by a single entity should statistically be dispatched on many different tasks and should therefore not be able to overtake the vote for a specific task.

MD: I created a computer language (see WithGLEE.com). As I was creating it I was basking in the environment where “I” made all the decisions. I had no inertia to keep me from abandoning a bad tact, reversing it, and taking another tact. In the end I was delighted with the result. But all the time, the camel that is the collection of internet process (e.g. Java, JavaScript, Python, … etc.) won out, because though they were all deficient as horses, they had a constituency as a camel (a horse designed by committee). Python is the most obvious. You don’t use visual structure as a programming element.

While Sarmenta’s work is interesting, a few modifications are required to work in our context. In this section, we discuss preliminary ideas on how we believe this work could be adapted to iExec needs. Our idea is to orchestrate the exchanges between the users and the workers as described below.

MD: You better find a different word than “orchestrate” if you want to establish trust. Global warming is a perfect example of “orchestration”. Climate change is a perfect example of “orchestration soiling its own nest and having to change its feathers”.

HC: In addition to the users and workers, we have an additional component: the scheduler. Schedulers manage pools of worker and act as middlemen between the blockchain (listening to the iExec smart-contract) and the workers. A scheduler can, in fact, be composed of multiple programs which complementary features but we will here consider it as a single “virtual” entity.

MD: Right. Always leave openings for large numbers of regulators and bureaucrats. Did it ever occur to you that a full 3/4ths of the fruits of your labor go to government? Really bright people, when given the task of maintaining a broom in upright position, would create an enormously complicated platform using all kinds of sensors and PID controllers. Any maid would just suspend it from the top and rely on it’s naturally stable tendencies.

HC: One should notice that our discussion here does not deal with the scheduling algorithm itself. In a scheduler, the scheduling algorithm handles the logic responsible for the placement of jobs and handles execution errors. The scheduler is free to use any scheduling algorithm it desires as long as it can deal with step 3 and 5 of the following protocol.

MD: Ah yes … and to change it dynamically and often to suit conflicting whims. Ask Facebook how that’s working as they bend to demands to filter out fake news … when all they really are is a medium of communication and the content should be none of their business or responsibility. The gangsters are trying to do the same thing to the internet. Their ox is being gored badly … and what could be better than to gore their ox out of existence?

HC: Workers register themselves to a scheduler.

MD: I’m not going to comment further. This is a perfect example of the condition: “losing sight of our objective we redouble our efforts”. It’s also an example of “if I am a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. It’s also an example of “the first and best solution to every issue is government and regulation”.
Read on at your own risk!

HC: Users submit tasks to scheduler managing the work pool they chose.
Workers ask the scheduler for work to execute. The scheduler gives them tasks to be executed. Note: If we are coming from step 5 we should not ask a worker to compute a task it has already contributed to.
The worker computes the result (A) of the task. In order for this result to be validated, the platform has to achieve a consensus on this result. This is achieved through Sarmenta’s voting. In order to contribute to this consensus, the worker commits the result to the scheduler:
a. Generate and memorize (but not publish) a random value r (private disposable personal identifier).
b. Submit a transaction (contribution) with :
i. hash(A) → used to vote on an answer;
ii. hash(r) → used as a public disposable personal identifier;
iii. hash(A+r) → used as proof of knowledge of A;
iv. commitment fund (with a minimum value) → incentive to only commit good results (see later). A higher commitment fund increases the Cr (cf Sarmenta, L.F.) and thus increases the potential returns (see later);
v. A tamper-proof timestamp → Used by the worker to prove its contribution and claim its reward.
With each new vote (contribution) by the workers, the scheduler checks if an answer (hash(A)) achieves the expected likelihood threshold using Sarmenta’s voting.
a. If we do not have a consensus, the scheduler will ask more nodes to compute the same task (dynamic replication) and contribute to the consensus → go back to 3;
b. If we have a consensus continue to 6.
An answer has been selected. The scheduler can now:
a. Publish the elected hash(A). At this point no new contribution is possible.
b. Ask the winning workers for A and r. Having a value of r which matched a correct transaction dating from before the election result is a proof of contribution. At this point A can be published by any worker. The value for r shows that a worker knew the answer they voted for before the results of the election. That way they cannot claim a contribution by just submitting a transaction with the hash(A) published by other voters.
c. Check the correctness of each worker contribution.
d. Put the deposit fund (stake) of all workers who voted for another answer in the reward kitty.
e. Distribute the reward kitty (users payment + deposit fund from wrong workers) among the winning workers proportionally to their contribution (Cr value computed from the reputation and the funds committed to the vote). The scheduler may take a commission for its work.
f. Increase the reputation of winners, decrease (reset) the reputation of losers.
g. Send the, now validated, answer to the user.

Equations used by Sarmenta to compute the credibility of a result from the credibility of the voters.
Trust level, worker pools, and billing policy

Sarmenta’s voting helps to achieve the given level of confidence using worker reputation and dynamic replication. This confidence level is defined by a value ε which describes the acceptable error margin. Results should only be returned if a confidence level higher than 1-ε is achieved. This value is a balance between cost and trust. A lower ε means more confidence in the result, but also requires more reputation/contributions to achieve consensus, and therefore more work to be performed. While this value could be defined by the user for each task, they might not know how to set it and it might cause billing issues.

We believe this value should be fixed for a worker pool. Therefore the billing policy could be defined for a worker pool depending on the performance of the workers (speed) and the ε value used by this worker pool scheduler (level of confidence). The user would then be free to choose between worker pools. Some worker pools might only contain large nodes running technology like Intel SGX to achieve fast result with low replication. Other worker pools could contain (slower) desktop computers and have their consensus settings adapted to this context.

With consensus managed by the scheduler and financial opportunities for late voters provided by the security deposit of opposing voters, the users should not worry about anything. Users pay for a task to be executed on a pool of worker, regardless of the number of workers that end up involved in the consensus. If consensus is fast and easy the payment of the user is enough to retribute the few workers who took part in the vote. If the consensus is hard and requires a lot of contributions, the workers are retributed using the security deposit of losing voters. This gives the workers a financial incentive to contribute to a consensus with many voters without requiring the user to pay more.

In the current version of this work, the protocol is such as the user has no part in the consensus. Payments are done when submitting the task and no stake is required. Results are public and guaranteed by the consensus. Users can therefore not discuss a result.
Assumptions and agents incentives

We believe the protocol described previously to be secure providing a few assumptions are met :

The first strong assumption is the ability of workers to publish their transaction (contribution) in a public manner. The medium used to publish those contributions has to provide a secure way for anyone to verify that contribution have been done prior to the election results. This can simply be achieved using current blockchain technology such as ethereum smart contracts. Still, that should not prevent us from considering other approaches like DHT (distributed hash tables).
The second assumption is that the voting algorithm will, in fact, give good results. This assumption is equivalent to saying that 51% of the reputation (of a worker pool) is not controlled by a single malicious user. We believe this is not a flaw of the protocol for two reasons:
a. All voting based systems, including the Nakamoto protocol, are subject to such attacks. This flaw is not in the design of the protocol.
b. There are strong (financial) penalties for bad actions on the platform and spot checking can be enforced to give more power to the scheduler and help them deal with bad actors. It is a matter of balance between the scheduler and the workers to enable spot-checking or not. We can imagine multiple worker pools, run by different independent schedulers which specific policy. Ultimately those pools could compete to attract the users (with elements such as the achieved quality of results and pricing).

Finally, we believe that both scheduler and workers will be inclined to work correctly in order to provide a good service to the users and benefit from the iExec ecosystem. Having 51% of the reputation controlled by actors wanting to do things right and benefit from it should not be an issue.

Incentives for the different agents are as follows

Users: They are requesting work to be done, and money in a healthy system would only come from them. User incentive to use the platform is to obtain good results for a low price. This will lead them to create a competition between worker pools. Their ability to chose or boycott worker pools create an incentive for workers and schedulers to work together in order to achieve the best service possible and attract users.
Workers: Their incentive is to gain as much money as possible for their work. To maximize their gain, they should maximize their contribution. Contribution can be obtained by having a good history (reputation) and/or by committing more funds when submitting a contribution. Giving bad results would make them lose both funds and reputation, which they should avoid at all cost.
a. New actors, with no history, start with a low reputation, meaning they will weigh less in the vote. Their chance to overtake a vote against trusted workers is small, and it would be a waste of fund from an attacker.
b. An old actor with a good history can win a lot by using their reputation to perform computations. As they are trusted, fewer contributions are needed to settle a vote and the reward kitty is therefore shared among fewer agents. On the other hand, by submitting bad results they risk losing all their reputation (and the money they committed with the contribution). Reputation does not guarantee them to win votes and spot-checking can help to detect bad contributors with high reputation.
Scheduler: Their incentive is to gain money by helping coordinate the platform. They make money through:
a. Commissions on all transactions;
b. Unclaimed rewards: if a worker doesn’t claim the reward after a contribution the corresponding fund would be kept by the scheduler.

In order to make money, the scheduler requires users to submit jobs and workers to register in its worker pool. This gives him the incentive to manage the worker pool correctly and grow strong.
Public schedulers for a fully decentralized platform

One of the key elements that could ultimately help a scheduler getting bigger and attracting more workers and users is to be open about its decisions. We believe that a scheduler could rely on a blockchain mechanism to orchestrate the protocol described above. In fact, this protocol is designed so that every message can, and should, be public. Security is achieved using cryptography. In particular, the use of a blockchain solves the issue of proving a contribution existence (presence on the blockchain) and validity (precedence to the vote results).

The main issue that still has to be solved is the worker designations. At step 3, the scheduler submits the task to specific workers. This is important for two reasons:

We don’t want workers to race. This would favor fast nodes and one could attack the voting system by coordinating many fast nodes to take over the vote before other nodes can contribute.

We don’t want malicious nodes to take over some votes. By randomly assigning workers to jobs we distribute malicious nodes amongst many votes where they would not be able to take over and where their best play is to provide good results and benefit from the platform working correctly.

Such a mechanism requires a source of randomness which any observers of the blockchain can agree on. This problem is beyond the scope of this post. Having such a source of entropy could help the scheduler designate workers using a random yet verifiable algorithm. The data required for verification would be public. The only change required to the protocol would be that a valid contribution from a worker would require a proof that the worker was designated by a scheduler.

MD: If you understand money, you know the proper process to enable it “guarantees” perpetual perfect supply/demand balance for the money itself. Thus, it is neither inflationary nor deflationary.

The Bitcoin process thinks (like the gold bugs think) that money needs to be rare to be viable. This is nonsense of course. But Bitcoin is enormously “deflationary” as a consequence of its process. Supply is severely limited and ultimately capped. Demand is exploding because of this (because it is deflationary) … not because Bitcoin is viable money.

Nobody in their right mind owning bitcoins would ever part with them (unless the inevitable collapse was in progress). That’s the nature of a “deflationary” asset. The only appeal to bitcoins is their anonymity. And thus it is illicit trade that is really finding bitcoin useful. Everyone else holding them is gambling … plain and simple.

I have never tried to really understand the underlying process of bitcoin mining. The reason for this is the process is bogus on its face. It has no way of matching supply and demand. If this is a characteristic of all cryptocurrencies (and block chain mechanisms) in general, then all are not viable. However, I see no reason a block chain concept cannot be devised that creates new transparent, unchangeable blocks at zero cost. Then the proper MOE process uses the block chain to deliver the necessary “transparency” attribute of a proper MOE process.

As always, I’ll now intersperse comments as appropriate to highlight these obvious principles and violations thereof.

Dimon said at an investment conference that the digital currency was a “fraud” and that his firm would fire anyone at the bank that traded it “in a second.” Dimon said he supported blockchain technology for tracking payments but that trading bitcoin itself was against the bank’s rules. He added that bitcoin was “stupid” and “far too dangerous.”

Schiff told CoinDesk:
“There’s certainly a lot of bullishness about bitcoin and cryptocurrency, and that’s the case with bubbles in general. The psychology of bubbles fuels it. You just become more convinced that it’s going to work. And the higher the price goes, the more convinced you become that you’re right. But it’s not going up because it’s going to work. It’s going up because of speculation.”

MD: The fact that it is going up is proof that it “does not work”. Real money never goes up or down. It stays constant over all time and space.

“What it comes down to is that bitcoin ain’t money.”

“Libertarian-minded crypto fans saw this was a way to liberate people from the government,” he said, concluding:

“I think it will have the opposite effect. People are going to lose money. This could really backfire, giving libertarian ideals a bad name by making fiat look good. The downside can be really spectacular.”

MD: Actually, a competitive proper MOE process would give people an alternative to the “improper” MOE process commanded by the money changers and the governments they institute. If instituted properly (i.e. guaranteeing zero inflation), and in multiplicative fashion (like credit cards) nobody would continue to use government money, It couldn’t compete. The government would be forced to demand use of government money (for more than just paying taxes) and that would tip their hand … i.e. that they are simply the money confiscation machine instituted by money changers. Right now that machine is confiscating 3/4ths of everything each of us makes.
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Cryptocurrencies are currencies with no government in the middle. No bank in the middle. No organizations in the middle keeping track of all your payments, or taking advantage of your spending so they can invade your privacy, and on and on.

Cryptocurrencies solve trillions of dollars’ worth of problems, which is why they will be worth trillions of dollars one day.

MD: He says about three things that are right and then caps it off by saying something that proves they solve no problems at all.

Consider the potential:

There is currently $200 trillion in cash, money and precious metals used as currencies in the world. Meanwhile, there’s only $200 billion in cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are eventually replacing traditional currencies.

MD: If he knew what he was talking about … i.e. what money really is … he would also say there are currently $200 trillion in-process trading promises (net of government counterfeiting that is demonstrably about 4%). But of course that isn’t true because government trading promises are always defaulted … i.e. counterfeiting right out of the box.

So that $200 billion will eventually rise to the level of currencies. And probably sooner than we can imagine.

MD: Admitting he is clueless about money. Supply and demand for real money rise and fall in lock step.

Ask yourself, why does the world need multiple currencies? There’s actually no real reason. The only reason we have a U.S. dollar and also a Canadian dollar is that in 1770 the people in Canada decided not to join the U.S. So an artificial border created two currencies. It’s all dictated by artificial borders.

MD: Actually, it’s because “none” of the world’s currencies are from a “proper” MOE process. If we had a proper MOE process that “guaranteed” zero inflation, then there would be no need for multiple currencies (exchange rates would be perpetually constant). However, there always should be multiple processes in operation … just like there should be multiple insurance companies in operation. They’re addressing an identical problem and are disciplined and driven to efficiency by transparency and competition.

In the past, an ounce of gold would be accepted almost anywhere in the world. In that sense, unbacked modern fiat currencies are a step backwards.

MD: As it is today. Gold becomes more acceptable in trade as the MOE process in place becomes more and more “improper” (i.e. tolerates more and more counterfeiting by governments and more and more tribute demands by the money changers. Gold is just a clumsy inefficient stand-in for real money.

But in cryptocurrency world, there are what I call “Use Borders.” Every currency is defined by its use. For instance, Ethereum is like Bitcoin but it makes “smart contracts” easier. Contract Law is a multi-trillion dollar industry so this has a huge use case. Filecoin makes storage easier. It’s a $100 billion industry. And on.

Studying the “use” cases, and the effectiveness of the coin to solve those use cases can help us make investment decisions confidently.

MD: KISS (Keep is Simple Stupid). Money is not about “use cases” … it is about trade over time and space. Block chains may be about use cases, but those cases are not cryptocurrency. They’re not currency at all. Who ever thought of a contract as being currency? Just trapped myself didn’t I … because in a proper MOE process, the money represents a contract … a promise by a trader to the whole trading community that he will deliver on a trade over time and space.

This is the great promise of cryptocurrencies and why they will change the world. It’s just getting started.

No normal non-expert should expect to make sense of the above. So let’s just assume that the cryptocurrency universe will continue to expand for a while and narrow the discussion down to a single question: Are cryptocurrencies inflationary? That is, will their spread lead to higher or lower prices for the average person, and greater or lesser financial instability for the markets, and what does this mean for today’s fiat currencies?

MD: That’s his judge of inflation? Higher (or lower prices)? Prices are just a crude measure of inflation. Inflation can’t be measured. But a proper process can guarantee it to be zero … and thus requires no measurement. No block chain process I have ever seen described attempts to maintain perfect balance between supply and demand for the money (i.e. trading promises) it represents.

MF: I suggest you continue to read this article if you find it interesting. If you do, I suggest you continue to annotate it in your mind knowing the principles of “real” money and how they apply. This article is making me tired.

One common opinion is that cryptocurrencies can’t be inflationary because their owners have to pay for them in fiat currencies. So one bitcoin bought means one dollar, yen, or euro sold, with the net effect on prices being zero.

This makes intuitive sense at first glance, but only holds for the moment of purchase. Consider what happened after someone in, say, 2014 exchanged dollars for bitcoins. The dollars held most of their value, which means the total amount of dollar purchasing power in the world remained constant. But those bitcoins went up by several thousand percent, dramatically increasing the purchasing power – and thus the potential inflationary impact – of the bitcoin complex.

In a Tweet on Saturday, Assange said the group’s investment in the cryptocurrency has seen a return greater than 50,000% since 2010. Wikileaks began investing in bitcoin back then because global payment processors like Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal were under pressure by the U.S. government to block the ability of the group to take payments.

In fact, Bitcoin has seen a more-than 9 million percent return over the dates Assange references. In certain periods in 2010, bitcoin was trading for mere pennies. According to coindesk.com, one unit of bitcoin is now worth a record high of roughly $5,700. Anyone buying bitcoin through much of 2011 and 2012, when one unit was sometimes trading below $1 and was often under $10, would indeed see a return on investment of more than 50,000%, assuming they never sold.

The difference between Wikileak’s purchasing power pre and post-bitcoin is immense. If Assange decides to spend his windfall on goods and services he’d have, at the margin, an inflationary impact on the stuff he buys.

So the answer to the question of cryptocurrencies’ impact on price levels depends on how their values change. If they rise after people buy them, then they’re inflationary. If they rise a lot, they’re potentially very inflationary.

In this sense, it might be helpful to view cryptocurrencies as assets like houses or stocks rather than as money. When they rise relative to fiat currencies they increase the purchasing power of their owners, generate a “wealth effect” in which owners feel richer and more comfortable with splurging, and in that way push up prices. Based on the following chart, a lot of early adopters are feeling a whole lot richer these days.

Which then leads to what might be the major cryptocurrency theme of the coming year: Why would governments allow such an inflationary supernova to explode right in front of them when they presumably have the power to stop it? Here’s one possible — and of course disturbing — answer:

Will cryptocurrencies trash cash? ‘Fedcoin’ could do it
Economist Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research asks the obvious question: Why would central banks—which derive their power as the centralized gatekeepers of fiat currency creation, check clearing and payment processing—embrace a movement that’s primary motivation has been to usurp this power in a decentralized way?

Part of that, according to St. Louis Federal Reserve president James Bullard, is recognition that the technology has achieved critical mass. Thus, there’s a fear of being left behind as the very foundations of banking and monetary policy—intermediation, funds transfers, transactions—rapidly change, not unlike the way the creation of mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps changed housing finance in the mid-2000s.

There’s another, more self-serving purpose: Central banks could use their own cryptos to put the squeeze on paper currency. Why? To facilitate the use of negative interest rate policy, which has been deployed in Europe and Japan in recent years in half-baked forms. Currently, in Switzerland, short-term interest rates are at -0.75%.

When another recession hits, especially if one comes soon, a dive to even deeper rates of negative interest would be hampered by the hoarding of cash since banks would charge for deposits (vs. absorbing the cost of negative rates themselves, as they’re doing now). This is known by the economics cognoscenti as the “zero lower bound” in that interest rates cannot go much below negative before the traditional functions of deposits, loans and fractional money creation break down. Mattress stuffing ensues en masse.

The Fed is clearly thinking about it. In testimony to Congress last year, Fed chairman Janet Yellen admitted policymakers “expect to have less scope for interest-rate cuts than we have had historically,” adding she would not completely rule out the use of negative interest rates.

The BIS­—the central bank of central banks—in its latest quarterly review posited that a crypto backed by the Fed “has the potential to relieve the zero lower bound constraint on monetary policy.” Any distinction between regular dollars and this new “Fedcoin” could be removed by establishing a fixed one-to-one valuation. Any competition from the likes of bitcoin could be squashed by regulation; not unlike how the private ownership of gold was outlawed in the 1930s when it threatened the Fed’s ability to ease credit conditions.

At the risk of being repetitious, pretty much all of the above looks good for gold and great for silver.

While it is no doubt true that both the individual’s earning and expenditure patterns are conditioned to a large degree by the average patterns of his social group,

MD: What? What came first, the chicken or the egg? Hint: Indisputably, the individual came before the group.

the distinction between this indirectly coercive effect involved in the social urge to conform and the direct and unavoidable coercion involved in collective decision seems an extremely important one.

MD: It’s easy to see “social urges” are largely (totally?) the purposeful result of “propaganda”. Polls are a “measure of the effectiveness of the propaganda”!

DBx: The collective decisions that Jim had in mind here are, of course, ones made through, and enforced by, the state.

MD: The state is the product of the money changers. The state is propagandized every bit as much as the people it claims to “govern” and openly propagandizes!

For an individual to sense an urge to conform to the expectations of others – and almost always (more than you think!) to give in to that urge – is common and natural. This urge is part of human nature. We are social animals.

MD: Some of us are way less social than others. Many among us are totally valueless … they are just manipulative busybodies.

(The fact that Buchanan mentioned this reality in 1954 – and did so with an “of course” – is itself evidence against the straw-man ‘free-market’ economist who allegedly believes that each real-world individual is immune to social pressures – that is, believes that each individual is neither formed by, nor is part of, society.)

MD: I repeat. Propaganda (and brain washing) plays the predominant role now. This is easy to see after a long life span (70+ years). We are a product of our teaching … and almost none of that comes from our family … as it did in more sane times. It all now comes from government and media … both instituted by money changers.

But, as Jim says, this universal urge of A to largely conform to the expectations of B and C (who are part of A’s social group) is categorically different from A being threatened with violence by B and C if A does not do as B and C command.

MD: … assured by forcing A, B, and C to share the same space … in the interest of diversity!

This difference grows even greater in those many cases in modern, legislation-using societies when B and C command A not simply to conform to the evolved expectations of the group but, instead, to obey the arbitrary will of B and C (as when, for example, B and C use threats of violence to prevent A from driving a car for hire, or when B and C command A to pay to them a punitive fee if A insists on purchasing goods from a foreign seller).

MD: We are a society of laws … 40,000+ new ones each year. If we were a society, not of laws, not of the people, but of principles (the first being the golden rule), many problems would not exist … and those that surface would be easily addressed. And we would be far better off if we had many separate spaces … instead of uniting! Read the Anti-Federalist Papers. Those people got it … and the founding “children” did not!

Once we so much as move beyond the simple committee or town-meeting setting, however, something other than the passive response of suppliers [of public goods] must be reckoned with in any theory of politics that can pretend to model reality. Even if we take only the single step from town-meeting democracy to representative democracy, we must introduce the possible divergence between the interests of the representative or agent who is elected or appointed to act for the group and the interests of the group members themselves.

MD: Town-meetings are not even representative democracy. Democracy doesn’t work when more than 50 people are involved. WIth towns, hundreds to thousands of people are involved. If we were individuals of principles, any issue needing group attention would first be addressed by a group of 50 or less people. If the problem was beyond that scope, those 50 people would select a representative to go to the next lower group to address the issue with representatives from 50 other adjacent groups. With just six such layers, the entire population many times over can address all issues in a truly democratic fashion. In actuality, it would be rare indeed when an issue would progress to the sixth (and bottom) group.

DBx: I understand that my training as an economist ‘biases’ me. (Can someone point to a discipline the training in which does not then ‘bias’ its practitioners?)

MD: I am biased by “engineering training” .. and rejection of religious indoctrination. I can’t think of a single one of those biases that has proved to be untrue. Of what I have seen of economics, I don’t see a single one that “is” true … beginning with their concept of what money is! And what could be more important to their focus than that?

I understand also that my bias might be especially strong given that I began reading Jim Buchanan’s works while still an undergraduate – that I later was a colleague of Buchanan’s and Tullock’s – and, indeed, that I served for several years as the Director of the Center for Study of Public Choice. I plead guilty to being “biased.”

MD: Those who immerse themselves in religion also have such a strong … and misguided bias. Put on blinders and you “will” be blinded.

But I’ve also another plea – this one, for a clear-eyed, objective, unbiased person – say, Nancy MacLean – to tell me what is objectionable about Buchanan’s above-quoted statement?

MD: And I have one for DB … and have confronted him with it directly. He declared me to be “unorthodox” when I asked him to disprove the reality (which I prove) that “money is an in-process promise to complete a trade over time and space and is only created by traders … like you and me” and that gold “is not money” … and that “all” money is fiat (because all promises are fiat).

Why is it objectionable to do political theory with the understanding that, with representative democracy, there is a “possible divergence between the interests of the representative or agent who is elected or appointed to act for the group and the interests of the group members themselves”? What is the better alternative to recognizing this possibility?

MD: Has it occurred to DB that democracy cannot be representative … and thus cannot be democracy … with more than 50 people involved? To have a democratic discourse and decision, “all” participants must have the exact same grasp of the details of the issue … not spoon fed to them by propagandists.

If Nancy MacLean were to write a book on principal-agent law, would she dismiss as uncharitable those legal scholars who refuse to assume that agents always and naturally represent the interests of their principals perfectly?

MD: These days, anytime I see the words “scholar” and “theory” I know I’ve waded into the swamp! This is the most inbred collection of people you will ever want to see.

More practically, if MacLean were to hire a real-estate agent to sell her house, would she simply give – or has she simply given? – that agent carte blanche to act on MacLean’s behalf however that agent chooses? I ask these questions because I’m still amazed – no doubt due to my bias – that on page 58 of Democracy in Chains MacLean, seemingly in all seriousness, writes:

And, in their assumption that individuals always acted to advance their personal economic self-interest rather than collective goals or the common good, Buchanan’s school went further, projecting unseemly motives onto strangers about whom they knew nothing.

MD: I know not of a single instance where I acted in the interest of a collective goal in violation of a personal self-interest … economic or otherwise. And I don’t need the word “voluntarily” as a qualifier. When I am “forced” to do something (like pay taxes), I act in my self-interest by doing so … the force sees to it that it is in my self-interest that I do. They take away my stuff if I don’t.

The allegedly “unseemly motives” are nothing more than the self-interest that nearly all lawyers and all sound economists assume when doing their work.

MD: “Sound” economists? Do we see the kettle calling the pot black here again?

Indeed, these motives are identical to the motives that each of us assumes is operative in the actions of all people with whom we interact commercially.

MD: Right … they correctly call it price fixing don’t they!

All contracts that specify more than price and quantity – and perhaps even these – are written by people who MacLean would describe (were she consistent) as “projecting unseemly motives” onto others (some of whom they have met, but many of whom are “strangers about whom they know nothing”).

MD: If we were principled we wouldn’t have problems with contracts. Anyone who has created money to buy a house over time and space and used an FHA contract has consented to maintain “replacement value insurance” until the balance is paid in full. And such contracts are not modifiable … i.e. negotiable. Take it or leave it!

What is the principle? Support the insurance industry?

What should the principle be? Deliver on your trading promises. If there is any risk you won’t, insure yourself against that risk… i.e. pay an actuarially determined premium that addresses the risk of failing to deliver … not of failing to put the property back into some state already delivered on.

In my case I pay $2,000+ per year insurance on property improvements of about $130 replacement cost. Over a 30 year record of delivering on my money creation promise (i.e. returning the money I created), this actuarially suggest 1 in 2 properties within 1/2 mile of mine will be totally destroyed (fully 500 out of 1000 houses).

In my 70+ year lifetime not a single property has met this calamity. Further, when I confronted the bank and refused to buy the insurance (my balance being below the value of the underlying land that could not be destroyed), they purchased insurance … at my expense (from themselves) to meet the terms of the contract. The provisions for that are clearly laid out in the contract … violating any reasonable principle.

I then kept my own set of books and have now (by my accounting) completely delivered on my money creating promise. Yet the bank says I must continue to pay them for 3 more years … including paying for insurance for a risk they no longer even have an interest in

Over the time I have confronted them with this issue (a little over two years), 27 houses should have been destroyed. Predictably, none have been destroyed. Now, do you want to talk to me about contracts … especially those that you can’t negotiate … like an FHA contract?

I am having to sue the bank (Wells Fargo … whom I bailed out when they defaulted on their trading promises) for release of the lien … and if the jury says the contract is clear (like judges tell them to decide according to “clear” law) … the banks will prevail.

I’m counting on the jury observing that they are not only evaluating compliance with the contract … they are evaluating the validity (principles) of the contract … i.e. jury nullification. You can’t hand out leaflets on courthouse steps to tell them about this … but for darn sure “I” can inform them about it when I do this case “pro-se”.

If I engaged a lawyer, that lawyer would be disbarred for bringing forth such an argument … yet it is the first and most obvious valid argument.

If such prudent assumptions about other people’s motives are accepted readily when we do legal analysis – and when lawyers actually practice law – what is so objectionable about using such assumptions when doing political theory?

MD: A false choice! The law is flawed on it’s face. 40,000+ new ones each year are blatant proof.

Laws can’t work when there are more of them than anyone can know … and all of them have multiple decisions (decided meanings) in conflict with each other.

Definition of money

Money is “an in-process promise to complete a trade over time and space”.

Proof

Examine trade: (1) Negotiation; (2) Promise to deliver; (3) Delivery.

With simple barter exchange (2) and (3) happen simultaneously, on-the-spot. Money enables (2) and (3) to happen over time and space.

Thus money is obviously “an in-process promise to complete a trade over time and space”.

The “proper” MOE process

The “proper” Medium of Exchange (MOE) process, first and foremost “guarantees” perfect balance between supply and demand for money … i.e. zero inflation of the money itself. Since this is the nature of every trade, that is easy.

The process “certifies” (i.e. documents) new trading promises .. transparently for all to see … no anonymity. That creates the money, first as a ledger entry. Later it may be exchanged for cash or currency … and back.

This money then circulates anonymously in trade as the most common object in every simple barter exchange. It loses all identity with the trader creating it. All money in the process is the same, be it record, currency, or coin.

The process then monitors in-process trading promises for performance … transparently. On delivery, the money created is returned and destroyed. On default, that orphaned money is reclaimed immediately when detected through interest collection of like amount.

To do this fairly requires actuarial techniques. The process is very similar to the operation of a Mutual Insurance Fund … but no money is to be made on investment income. There are no reserves … so there is nothing to invest.